Exahust leak?

Gravy · 09-06-2006

OK, i recently pulled my turbo and replaced all the gaskets i needed to, ported to match and, noticed a TON of improvment in the car. Today, out of boredom i put half a can of Seafoam into the line going from the break booster into the intake. To try and clean up some of the sludge that's building up in my lines, and even blocking some i think. So i put the Seafoam in there with the car running, then turned it off. I had no smoke from the engine bay while poring it in, but of course was getting it out of the tail pipe.

I let the car sit for 20 minutes and after starting it up, to no suprise it back fired like crazy when i first started it up, and i had as much smoke coming from around the manifold/turbo as i did out the back of the car. In other words, it was smoking like hell. There seemed to be a good amount of smoke coming from right by the wastegate actuator arm. Which, i thought is normal, seeing as you can freely move it when the turbo was out of the car and was opening a full 90*'s.

Should i be getting exauhst leaking from there, and also should it be that bad? The car spools 10x better then it did before the gasket replacement. Plus, the throttle response seems better with the seafoam cleaning out the car. The car doesn't seem to spike 1 psi or so after the seafoam either, just trying to include all the facts to get some better input.

tim · 09-07-2006

Rod on it for a bit and get the seafoam burned out of the system. You should have done that from the beginning.

After it is all good, listen for an exhaust leak. If you can hear it it needs attention.

Gravy · 09-07-2006

No leak from around the manifold-head area, but it seems to be coming from where the actuator comes out of the turbine housing. And the odd thing is... plenty of it. My concern, or though was, does that affect your spool up? In my mind it should already have spooled the turbo when it gets to that point. But it's late, and i'm not thinking the best. Want some second hand opinions.

I let the car idle with the Seafoam in it untill it ws mostly gone. Then i took it for a spin. I always noticed cars are more "Pepy" after using it right before hand. And boy was she ever. Didn't knock either, but i'm sure it can't be good on the system.